Hello. Yesterday was great I just got done reading all the comments. I am having computer problems. If anyone wants to know who I am you can find me at the apple store these days.
I don't know if this is a good follow up, I know you want a Dibenedetto repost. But I like thinking about illustration as painting.
I still don't know who Mayberry is so I feel left out.
Cookiepuss Chen to Yuskavage would be good but I can't switch things around. I posted Ruth Root already.
Max who would you like to see. I am trying to post a variety but it is hard to get jpg. if someone doesn't have a gallery, unless I know them. You could send jpg. to my email for artist that aren't on the web.
(a suggestion for Burrito Brother: if you set up an account with blogger your name will appear in blue as a hypertext link, and nobody can pretend to be you. You have to set up a blog, but it can be empty.)
IN the days when everybody started fair, Best Beloved, the Leopard lived in a place called the High Veldt. 'Member it wasn't the Low Veldt, or the Bush Veldt, or the Sour Veldt, but the 'sclusively bare, hot, shiny High Veldt, where there was sand and sandy-coloured rock and 'sclusively tufts of sandy- yellowish grass. The Giraffe and the Zebra and the Eland and the Koodoo and the Hartebeest lived there; and they were 'sclusively sandy-yellow-brownish all over; but the Leopard, he was the 'sclusivest sandiest-yellowish-brownest of them all--a greyish-yellowish catty-shaped kind of beast, and he matched the 'sclusively yellowish-greyish-brownish colour of the High Veldt to one hair.
Oh sweet Sloth. Thanks for worrying, you big lug... But Burrito's just a hitch-hiker on this lonely cyber-highway. I don't want to set down any roots.
Now this work is just TOO illustrational for my tastes. I really don't see this as different than children's book illustrations except for a little blood. And unlike Magid's work, the 'incorrect' drawing doesn't have to do with experimentation or expression, just that that's the best she can draw. And they're really dry and boring. Someone prove to me that I'm wrong, please... Don't mean to be harsh, but this work is completely off my radar.
Yeah, we go look at it, make it and talk about it and blog about it. What's the problem.
Cutler is interesting in relation to Dzama. I liked her earlier work, it seems she is cleaning things up to much and her message is all about gender, myth, storytelling. I wish there was more strangeness, they are all so organized. Yet still there is something that draws me in from time to time.
I will never stop loving you. Mayberry should tell you who he is again so you know. The clues are there from yesterday. Turns out he is a pretty cool painter. Nice work, Hey Mayberry.
You keep going with your own stream of associations, painter. Don't let us de-rail you, we are all just excited to share ideas, should you ever need them. Your curation is always fun.
Yes she has painted backgrounds, but sadly it looks like her more recent, more polished work is about figures superimposed in the emptiness that suggests a lack of commitment, balls, and imagination.
Suen Wong. On my hate list. Along with Ghada Amer, Orly Cogan...I'm sure there are more...women making work about being a woman, using self as subject, little pictorial invention, just well-organized, tastefully colored....well they're all doing different things but still. I hate.
similarity to Chinese scrolls, Japanese wooddblock prints (someone fill me in on the art history thing my brain is swiss cheeese) or Indian Miniature painting.
This seems like the tentative start for a finished painting, and not one that's ready for exhibition.
The specific sort of patterning Cutler uses makes me think the thing might be better embroidered into a tapestry, or a fragment thereof, not rendered in paint. Or else the entirety could be covered with more of those stitch-textured painting marks.
I feel the orientation of the clustered figures on the "page" is a mistake that could be rectified by adding panels on either side to continue the painstaking work of completing the illustration. Or alternatively, slice the thing top to bottom and throw away the right side.
And too late she stopped outlining everything in radiating blades of grass. The greenery (blackery here) does not convincingly mediate between the figures and the white space. It would be better to activate that white space, and make it feel deliberate somehow, by letting some more of the sinuous drawing that's on the inside stray to the outer contours. Although the two hanging tails don't do a very good job of that.
No rules and any of an infinite number of options: as long as the picture gets better and this one could handle some serious improvement.
Ahab, your verbose formalist, teacherly critiques make you sound like you are out of it. Sorry. What you tell us tells us more about you than illuminating anything about the artist. But keep trying.
i think that they seem a little bit tight, but i cant help feeling enchanted by them at times. they can sometimes also feel just a tiny but gimmicky, but they are sort of strange and beatiful and i really like the open narrative quality of her work. i love the use of animals and nature. i like the white backgrounds like they are just floating out there disconnected. i guess im saying i like them. its just taste tho really. they spark my imagination. i enjoy free associating onto them and making up for myself what they are telling me. they are like storytelling images. and i love a good storytale.
i think it's bold of cutler to be so straightforward about the work: she makes no bones about being anything OTHER than pattern, illustration, drawing influenced by asian art and fairy tale. i'm impressed that she's so clear about what she's doing. and that it's so out there. by the way other anonymous, i dont see how this boils down to anything about being a woman-- except maybe it's "fairytale-ish"? good god, then how would you explain the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson, etc.
for me, this work just seems safe. i also think that's why a lot of people like it. it is nonthreatening and also gives back narrative if you spend time with it, as book illustrations do. there's nothing wrong with it, but any time i see a finished product that looks too "executed" i feel a bit bored. i think i'd like to see some thumbprints or smudges or something.
that makes sense that you would say that, ww, based on your work which i have seen here on the blog... i like your work a lot better for all it's blurs and blobs and smears. but i appreciate the neatness here for its own wierdo neatnik obsessiveness. and i find this kind of obsessional pattern and decoration way more gratifying than the kind that DOESNT form itself into pictures (you know, those kind of guys who make obsessive little marks all over the canvas and it DOESNT turn into a narrative, EVER. i get tired of all that picky little stuff and feel rewarded by amy cutler's pictorial give-back.
yeah, that makes sense. there is visual reward with her work for sure, but for me only to a point. i guess i just feel that it is a bit too closed up and done - like there's a glass ceiling for experiencing this type of work that is directly related to the handling of materials.
I now realize that maybe you weren't sure that my 'grease the wheels' stuff was a complete joke! Sorry if I rubbed the wrong way. It's hard to read into things via blog.
And I'm trying to think of more to say on Cutler, but I can't... I'm out of gas.
The first time I saw her work was at Boston's Miller Block Gallery in 1999, it was a lot messier then and didn't have the empty white backgrounds. I didn't like it any more then than I do know, meaning not especially yes or no, but the older stuff seemed to have more potential than the latest. I don't like the, for me, dead end she has arrived at. I think about how much I liked seeing all the backgrounds, blades of grass, little stones, buildings, and beds in the Fra Angelico show.
The last time I saw her stuff was at her 2004 show at Leslie Tonkonow, the 2004 Biennial, and About Painting at the Tang in Saratoga.
Interestingly, that 1999 Miller Block visit was also my first time to see Laylah Ali, who was also working larger and (a bit) looser at that time, and whose latest work I am really into. they seemed to have gone in the same direction, but I think Ali is the better and more interesting artist.
Sorry for all the "where and when" facts, but it annoyed me when Tough Guy made the assumption in the Emily Noelle Lambert comments that if you are not a New Yorker your only exposure to this stuff is through Google thumbnails. Very sad for you, Tough Guy. You are not even aware how small and narrow your world is.
Ahab - I hope you will disregard that person who commented after you.
32 comments:
Hello. Yesterday was great I just got done reading all the comments. I am having computer problems. If anyone wants to know who I am you can find me at the apple store these days.
I don't know if this is a good follow up, I know you want a Dibenedetto repost. But I like thinking about illustration as painting.
I still don't know who Mayberry is so I feel left out.
Cookiepuss Chen to Yuskavage would be good but I can't switch things around.
I posted Ruth Root already.
Max who would you like to see. I am trying to post a variety but it is hard to get jpg. if someone doesn't have a gallery, unless I know them. You could send jpg. to my email for artist that aren't on the web.
Peg Leg thanks for loving me.
Well, maybe we should all go out and actually LOOK at ART rather than jpegs? Or better yet, make art?
(a suggestion for Burrito Brother: if you set up an account with blogger your name will appear in blue as a hypertext link, and nobody can pretend to be you. You have to set up a blog, but it can be empty.)
Maybe I should do that.
JUST SO!
IN the days when everybody started fair, Best Beloved, the Leopard lived in a place called the High Veldt. 'Member it wasn't the Low Veldt, or the Bush Veldt, or the Sour Veldt, but the 'sclusively bare, hot, shiny High Veldt, where there was sand and sandy-coloured rock and 'sclusively tufts of sandy- yellowish grass. The Giraffe and the Zebra and the Eland and the Koodoo and the Hartebeest lived there; and they were 'sclusively sandy-yellow-brownish all over; but the Leopard, he was the 'sclusivest sandiest-yellowish-brownest of them all--a greyish-yellowish catty-shaped kind of beast, and he matched the 'sclusively yellowish-greyish-brownish colour of the High Veldt to one hair.
http://www.boop.org/jan/justso/leopard.htm
Oh sweet Sloth. Thanks for worrying, you big lug...
But Burrito's just a hitch-hiker on this lonely cyber-highway. I don't want to set down any roots.
Now this work is just TOO illustrational for my tastes. I really don't see this as different than children's book illustrations except for a little blood. And unlike Magid's work, the 'incorrect' drawing doesn't have to do with experimentation or expression, just that that's the best she can draw. And they're really dry and boring. Someone prove to me that I'm wrong, please...
Don't mean to be harsh, but this work is completely off my radar.
Mark we DO go out and look at art.
Yeah, we go look at it, make it and talk about it and blog about it. What's the problem.
Cutler is interesting in relation to Dzama. I liked her earlier work, it seems she is cleaning things up to much and her message is all about gender, myth, storytelling. I wish there was more strangeness, they are all so organized. Yet still there is something that draws me in from time to time.
I will never stop loving you. Mayberry should tell you who he is again so you know. The clues are there from yesterday. Turns out he is a pretty cool painter. Nice work, Hey Mayberry.
They are precthious little things aren't they? She bugth me but I wouldn't throw it out if I owned one.
You keep going with your own stream of associations, painter. Don't let us de-rail you, we are all just excited to share ideas, should you ever need them. Your curation is always fun.
Who Made Who?
Su En Wong.
http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/features/finch/finch3-7-7.asp
Don't call it a movement.
Does she ever paint backgrounds? The white space reminds me of the same device Norman Rockwell often used in his work.
Let's see some Eisenman!! She rocks the house.
Yes she has painted backgrounds, but sadly it looks like her more recent, more polished work is about figures superimposed in the emptiness that suggests a lack of commitment, balls, and imagination.
Suen Wong. On my hate list. Along with Ghada Amer, Orly Cogan...I'm sure there are more...women making work about being a woman, using self as subject, little pictorial invention, just well-organized, tastefully colored....well they're all doing different things but still. I hate.
to sum up:
Shallow/flat space
Repetition of the figure
clear representation
similarity to Chinese scrolls, Japanese wooddblock prints (someone fill me in on the art history thing my brain is swiss cheeese) or Indian Miniature painting.
Cartoons based on the above history.
i.e. Manga.
How's the market for this stuff?
This seems like the tentative start for a finished painting, and not one that's ready for exhibition.
The specific sort of patterning Cutler uses makes me think the thing might be better embroidered into a tapestry, or a fragment thereof, not rendered in paint. Or else the entirety could be covered with more of those stitch-textured painting marks.
I feel the orientation of the clustered figures on the "page" is a mistake that could be rectified by adding panels on either side to continue the painstaking work of completing the illustration. Or alternatively, slice the thing top to bottom and throw away the right side.
And too late she stopped outlining everything in radiating blades of grass. The greenery (blackery here) does not convincingly mediate between the figures and the white space. It would be better to activate that white space, and make it feel deliberate somehow, by letting some more of the sinuous drawing that's on the inside stray to the outer contours. Although the two hanging tails don't do a very good job of that.
No rules and any of an infinite number of options: as long as the picture gets better and this one could handle some serious improvement.
Ahab, your verbose formalist, teacherly critiques make you sound like you are out of it. Sorry. What you tell us tells us more about you than illuminating anything about the artist. But keep trying.
i think that they seem a little bit tight, but i cant help feeling enchanted by them at times. they can sometimes also feel just a tiny but gimmicky, but they are sort of strange and beatiful and i really like the open narrative quality of her work. i love the use of animals and nature. i like the white backgrounds like they are just floating out there disconnected. i guess im saying i like them. its just taste tho really. they spark my imagination. i enjoy free associating onto them and making up for myself what they are telling me. they are like storytelling images. and i love a good storytale.
i think it's bold of cutler to be so straightforward about the work: she makes no bones about being anything OTHER than pattern, illustration, drawing influenced by asian art and fairy tale. i'm impressed that she's so clear about what she's doing. and that it's so out there.
by the way other anonymous, i dont see how this boils down to anything about being a woman-- except maybe it's "fairytale-ish"? good god, then how would you explain the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson, etc.
Painter, many others love you too.
for me, this work just seems safe. i also think that's why a lot of people like it. it is nonthreatening and also gives back narrative if you spend time with it, as book illustrations do. there's nothing wrong with it, but any time i see a finished product that looks too "executed" i feel a bit bored. i think i'd like to see some thumbprints or smudges or something.
maybe a smear of poo.
that makes sense that you would say that, ww, based on your work which i have seen here on the blog... i like your work a lot better for all it's blurs and blobs and smears. but i appreciate the neatness here for its own wierdo neatnik obsessiveness. and i find this kind of obsessional pattern and decoration way more gratifying than the kind that DOESNT form itself into pictures (you know, those kind of guys who make obsessive little marks all over the canvas and it DOESNT turn into a narrative, EVER. i get tired of all that picky little stuff and feel rewarded by amy cutler's pictorial give-back.
yeah, that makes sense. there is visual reward with her work for sure, but for me only to a point. i guess i just feel that it is a bit too closed up and done - like there's a glass ceiling for experiencing this type of work that is directly related to the handling of materials.
but now i when i look again at her image, and let myself get wrapped up in it, i think i'm a lunatic for my last comment.
is it the white backgrounds? are they too purposely a respite for the image? lack of context as a device?
her work is nice, fine, but limited. there is really nothing not to like, but at the same time -?
precious
Hey MM and WW:
I now realize that maybe you weren't sure that my 'grease the wheels' stuff was a complete joke!
Sorry if I rubbed the wrong way. It's hard to read into things via blog.
And I'm trying to think of more to say on Cutler, but I can't... I'm out of gas.
nothing moe to say cause there aint much to say about wich thar aint much to it, ya see?
The first time I saw her work was at Boston's Miller Block Gallery in 1999, it was a lot messier then and didn't have the empty white backgrounds. I didn't like it any more then than I do know, meaning not especially yes or no, but the older stuff seemed to have more potential than the latest. I don't like the, for me, dead end she has arrived at. I think about how much I liked seeing all the backgrounds, blades of grass, little stones, buildings, and beds in the Fra Angelico show.
The last time I saw her stuff was at her 2004 show at Leslie Tonkonow, the 2004 Biennial, and About Painting at the Tang in Saratoga.
Interestingly, that 1999 Miller Block visit was also my first time to see Laylah Ali, who was also working larger and (a bit) looser at that time, and whose latest work I am really into. they seemed to have gone in the same direction, but I think Ali is the better and more interesting artist.
Sorry for all the "where and when" facts, but it annoyed me when Tough Guy made the assumption in the Emily Noelle Lambert comments that if you are not a New Yorker your only exposure to this stuff is through Google thumbnails. Very sad for you, Tough Guy. You are not even aware how small and narrow your world is.
Ahab - I hope you will disregard that person who commented after you.
i decided: i like the tigers and the white background but i dont like the little heads as much.
anonymous: would you rather I make disingenuous comments about what you sound like?
martin: disregard "you sound like you are out of it"? or disregard "keep trying"? But I think I know what you meant - thanks.
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